


crawling in my skin

by thecopperriver



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Blood, Blood and Gore, Bodily Fluids, Body Horror, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Memory Alteration, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-consensual surgery, Surgery without anasthetic, Vivisection, seriously Snoke opens Hux up and takes him apart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:28:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24168136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecopperriver/pseuds/thecopperriver
Summary: Snoke has been watching Hux's career with great interest, but can't figure out what sets the young Major apart.  So he decides to do a more...hands-on examination.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43





	crawling in my skin

**Author's Note:**

> Please pay attention to the tags! This story is heavy on body horror, if that's not your thing please don't read it. This story was originally posted to tumblr a few years ago as part of a Huxloween event, but I figured I'd toss it up on AO3.

Interrogation training keeps Hux’s breathing steady when he wakes, nude and chilled. The last thing he remembers is reporting to the General for a private meeting. But that’s definitely not where he is now. Have they been betrayed? Is the General unsure of his loyalties? It seems possible, for the cold metal at his back  _ could _ be an interrogation chair. If that’s the case, Hux is confident this won’t take long. He’s nothing but loyal to the First Order. But if they’ve been betrayed…well, he always knew their cause might demand his life.

The faint whirr of a fan has a renewed draft of cool air blowing across his skin. Hux can feel the fine hairs standing on end, pimpling in the chill, a faint shiver racing through him. There’s no other sounds in the room, no breath from a potential interrogator. The air has a strong antiseptic smell, stinging his nostrils but not quite covering the metallic tinge of old blood. Bright light from directly above his face has spots dancing behind his eyelids. He’s disoriented from whatever drug he was given to get him here, not quite certain which way is up.

He’s got as much information as he can gather with his eyes closed. Cautiously, Hux opens them just a slit, peering between pale lashes. From what he can see, he’s alone. Heart pounding, he dares a full survey of the room. Perhaps he can escape before they return for him.

The room looks more like a morgue than an interrogation chamber. Hux is bound down to an autopsy table, durasteel restraints at ankle, wrists, and neck keeping him motionless. A faucet hangs over him ominously. Glancing as far to the right as he can turn his head shows him a tray full of shining durasteel implements. To the left, Hux strains his eyes against the shadows of the unlit portion of the room. If he can just spot a control panel…

“Supreme Leader!” Instinct has Hux attempting to snap to attention in spite of his situation. He had been permitted to see him precisely once before, a commendation for his strategy when his unit annexed Borosk for the Order. This was not what he had envisioned for their second meeting.

Snoke glides quietly to his side. Hux’s skin crawls when a spidery pale hand skims up his leg and rests possessively on his belly. “Welcome, General. I have been watching your career with great interest.”

Hux swallows anxiously. “Sir, please. Have I overreached myself somehow? Offended you?” He has ambitions, but so do most in the Order. “Why do you call me General? My current rank is Major.”

The Leader laughs, a chilling, whispery sound. “Oh, but  _ you will be _ . But first, I wish to find out what makes you  _ tick _ .

“I am curious about you, Armitage Hux. Your father had such very low expectations for you. I want to know how this frail body houses one of the leading minds of my First Order.” As he speaks, Snoke walks around Hux, keeping one hand on him at all times. Only when he reaches the tray full of instruments does he turn away, the clink of metal filling Hux with dread.

When the glaring light glints off a scalpel in Snoke’s hand, dread turns to terror. No interrogation training could have prepared to be fucking  _ vivisected  _ by his own leader. “Supreme Leader, please, I’ll serve you faith-” Hux’s voice cuts off abruptly with a gesture from Snoke. Though his mouth still moves, no sound escapes from his throat.

“None of that now, General. If I have to listen to you beg and scream, I will simply lose interest in you. I assure you, that would not be wise. I might have to do something worse.”

The promise in the Leader’s scarred and twisted face has Hux nodding dumbly. He would rather never know what Snoke would consider  _ worse _ .

Snoke smiles approvingly down at him, proudly. The part of Hux that’s conditioned to strive for that look lights up, and he tries to bury himself in that feeling, to shut off what he knows is coming. “Excellent. Now, try to hold still.”

The first slice of the scalpel doesn’t even hurt until Snoke has cut down past his ribcage, it’s so sharp. And then his world explodes into pain. The tall xeno sets aside his scalpel and buries his hands into Hux’s abdomen. Hux stares at the ceiling in an effort to avoid watching his own intestines being pulled out like fleshy ropes. Every muscle in his body is rigid with agony and the effort to hold himself back from writhing. Terrified that if he moves, something will tear.

“Humanity is so peculiar,” Snoke muses as he runs Hux’s insides through his fingers. “How have you spread out through the galaxy when you’re all so fragile? Just one careless movement of my fingernail, one nick, and you’re rotting from the inside-out.”

Hux tries to moan, deep in his throat. The vibrations die before he can even start. If Snoke wants him dead, why is he dragging it out like this? Fuck. He can feel his bowels release. Is it from the pain? Or from someone else’s hands mucking about in his insides? Humiliation forces the first tear from his eyes. The stench of his own waste thickens every sobbing breath.

When Snoke drapes Hux’s intestines over him like a garland, Hux squirms fruitlessly, choking down bile at the disgusting slimy warmth. Everything rebels at the way he’s being toyed with, his insides splayed out as if he’s a malfunctioning piece of equipment being inspected for failure. The Supreme Leader was correct. If Hux could speak, he’d be disgracing himself with his pleading. Offering anything if the Leader would just kill him clean.

“Why do humans still have this ‘appendix’?” 

Hux arches in agony when Snoke plucks it off the end of his large intestine. Like plucking fruit off the vine. An invisible hand forces him to watch as the xeno dangles it in his face. The part of Hux that is still analytical, displaced from this whole nightmare, realizes that it really  _ does _ look like a shrimp. Huh. His anatomy professor was right.

A heavy sigh pulls him back from his drifting. “You should really thank me, you know.”

_ “Thank you, sir!” _

Snoke continues, “All the appendix really does is collect poison. It could have killed you at any time.” He picks something else up from the tray, but Hux can’t tell what it is until searing heat and the scent of cooked meat hits him. The Leader puts the cautery iron back on the table. “There.”

Thin spidery fingers reach back into his abdominal cavity. “So many organs all packed in here. Do you know what a gallbladder does? Why do you have a bladder  _ and _ a gallbladder?” His hand closes around Hux’s bladder, and urine streams down his leg.

There’s no hope of stopping the tears from pouring down his face.

At last Snoke seems to tire of poking around in his abdominal cavity. His intestines are coiled back into place with some degree of precision, which has Hux hoping that he’ll survive this after all. Is it done?

But the Leader turns back with a device that Hux recognizes. 

_ “Oh shit.” _ Hux tries to find that place in his head that his training has given him. (His training and his father.) The place he went to during interrogation prep. The place he draws on when he’s waiting for his target while sniping. He’s not fast enough.

The rib spreader splits his chest open with a sickening  _ crack _ . Honestly at this point, Hux isn’t sure how he hasn’t simply blacked out from the pain.

“That would be dull,” Snoke answers his unspoken thought.

The agony blurs the rest of it. The only thing that’s clear anymore is the pain spiking through him. Hux stares at the ceiling dully as his Leader rummages around his chest. He has a vague notion that Snoke had torn out and discarded his spleen with the same casual disinterest as he had the appendix, but it doesn’t matter. Let the Leader do with him as he wishes. He’s sworn everything he is to the Order.

The only thing that cuts through the dull haze of him swimming in agony is Snoke plucking his heart from his chest. Hux watches in horror as his still-beating heart is held in bloody fingers.

_ “Please. Put it back, or kill me. Please.” _

“It is fascinating. I have taken you to pieces, and yet I can find nothing that distinguishes you. You are comprised of the same fragile components as any other human, but somehow you have set yourself apart. I could peel apart your musculature, but scrawny as you are, it seems unlikely to be the determining factor.” Snoke sighs heavily. “I suppose it must all be tied up in that clever mind of yours. Ah well, some day that will cease to be of use to me as it is.”

It’s a relief when Snoke sets Hux’s heart carefully back into place. The xeno removes the rib-spreader and reassembles his body. Whatever had been holding Hux conscious, it fades as Snoke begins to stitch him back together.

Hux bolts upright in bed, gasping for breath. His fingers scrabble frantically at his t-shirt. He actually tears it in his urgent need to look for the ugly Y-incision that Snoke had left. Shoulder wrenched from pulling it off at last, he stares in disbelief at his unmarred chest. Well, not unmarred, but clear of any disfiguring leftover from a vivisection.

“Hux? What’s wrong?” A sleepy voice startles him badly enough to lurch out of bed, falling gracelessly to the floor as his feet tangle in his sheets.

Kylo’s dark head peers over the edge of the bed at his sprawled form. Sleepy brown eyes question Hux’s panic as Kylo yawns.

“Kylo?” Hux’s head is spinning. When he was a Major, he hadn’t known the Knight. But it had all felt so real…

He must sense how torn up Hux is inside. Kylo climbs out of bed and pulls Hux into his arms, leaning against the bed. “What is it, Hux?”

“Snoke, he…” Hux chokes. “He told me he wanted to figure out what made me tick. And then he calmly and methodically tore out my organs. And when he was done, he put them back inside.”

Warm arms hold him tighter as he confesses to the horror. “I’m sure it was just a very vivid nightmare, Hux. My Master would never do that to his prized General.”

Hux shakes his head in denial. “I wasn’t a General. I was just a Major, though he kept addressing me as General.” 

“Still…” Kylo kisses his temple. “I can dampen the memory of your dream, if you like.”

Trembling in visceral terror, Hux nods a shaky agreement. “Please.”

Kylo is silent for a long time, and Hux welcomes his familiar presence around the edges of his mind. The longer he takes though, the more unsettled the feeling is. When it withdraws at last, Hux waits for Kylo to tell him what’s wrong.

Heartbeat getting more rapid as Kylo remains silent, Hux finally demands, “tell me what’s wrong.”

“Why would you think anything’s wrong?”

Hux turns to look him in the eye, seeing fear written plainly across Kylo’s open face. “You’re not very good at lying, for a Dark Force user. Even worse when I can see your expression.”

Brow furrowed, Kylo seems to be considering whether to refuse.

“Just tell me. I’ll think of worse things on my own.”

“I…” Kylo hesitates, “...are you sure?”

Bile climbing his throat, Hux still nods.

“I - there’s traces of memory alteration. What you dreamed...may not have been a dream.”


End file.
